"Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

""manuscripts don't burn" (рукописи не горят)"
— Mikhail Bulgakov

"Remove the document—and you remove the man."
— Mikhail Bulgakov

""just like a murderer jumps of nowhere in an ally, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once""
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"In the first few seconds an aching sadness wrenched his heart, but it soon gave way to a feeling of sweet disquiet, the excitement of gypsy wanderlust"
— Mikhail Bulgakov

"Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

" * 'You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev.

'Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied.
'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.
'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!'
"
— Mikhail Bulgakov

""There's only one degree of freshness — the first, which makes it also the last""
— Mikhail Bulgakov

"If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped onto the veranda and cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking out from it, and his raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters to sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the cast-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it…And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone’s bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you’re afraid, afraid…Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!..."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

""You were right," said the Master impressed by the neatness of Korovyov's work, "when you said: no documents, no person. So that means I don't exist since I don't have any documents.""
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"'I shall sit down,' replied the cat, sitting down, 'but I shall enter an objection with regard to your last. My speeches in no way resemble verbal muck, as you have been pleased to put it in the presence of a lady, but rather a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms, the merit of which would be appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella, and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.'

'Your king is in check,' said Woland.

'Very well, very well,' responded the cat, and he began studying the chessboard through his opera glasses.

'And so, donna,' Woland addressed Margarita, 'I present to you my retinue. This one who is playing the fool is the cat Behemoth...'"
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?"
— Mikhail Bulgakov

"The most amazing combinations can result if you suffle the pack enough."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog)

"You will fall asleep with your grimy eternal cap on your head, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will begin to reason wisely. And you will never be able to chase me away. I will guard your sleep."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"he was coming to understand he could not come to rectify anything in his life, only forget."
— Mikhail Bulgakov

"Don't you know that manuscripts don't burn"
— Mikhail Bulgakov

"You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"Where would your good be if there were no evil, and what the world look like without shadow?"
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"Why try to pursue what is completed?"
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"Nobody should be whipped. Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog)

"And at midnight there came an apparition in hell. A handsome dark-eyed man with a dagger-like beard, in a tailcoat, stepped onto the veranda and cast a regal glance over his domain. They used to say, the mystics used to say, that there was a time when the handsome man wore not a tailcoat but a wide leather belt with pistol butts sticking out from it, and his raven hair was tied with scarlet silk, and under his command a brig sailed the Caribbean under a black death flag with a skull and crossbones.
But no, no! The seductive mystics are lying, there are no Caribbean Seas in the world, no desperate freebooters to sail them, no corvette chases after them, no cannon smoke drifts across the waves. There is nothing, and there was nothing! There is that sickly linden over there, there is the case-iron fence, and the boulevard beyond it…And the ice is melting in the bowl, and at the next table you see someone’s bloodshot, bovine eyes, and you’re afraid, afraid…Oh, gods, my gods, poison, bring me poison!..."
— Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita)

"Kindness. The only possible method when dealing with a living creature. You'll get nowhere with an animal if you use terror, no matter what its level of development may be. That I have maintained, do maintain and always will maintain. People who think you can use terror are quite wrong. No, no, terror is useless, whatever its colour – white, red or even brown! Terror completely paralyses the nervous system."
— Mikhail Bulgakov